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Having just recently raised two, I'd say their generation was just as active as ours. The difference was a lot more of it was organized compared to our generation where it was spontaneous. Soccer (Fall, winter indoor, spring), Little League, softball, basketball, Scouts/CubScouts, and then school sports when they hit middle/high school.
Having just recently raised two, I'd say their generation was just as active as ours. The difference was a lot more of it was organized compared to our generation where it was spontaneous. Soccer (Fall, winter indoor, spring), Little League, softball, basketball, Scouts/CubScouts, and then school sports when they hit middle/high school.
Besides Scouts (which only a very tiny minority of kids are in), all you mentioned were team sports. Many kids are not good in team sports, particularly at the highly competitive levels of even elementary-age team spots these days.
I think it's worthwhile taking stock of the variety of passtimes open to kids these days compared to decades past. A paucity of different passtimes cannot be a better thing.
Having just recently raised two, I'd say their generation was just as active as ours. The difference was a lot more of it was organized compared to our generation where it was spontaneous. Soccer (Fall, winter indoor, spring), Little League, softball, basketball, Scouts/CubScouts, and then school sports when they hit middle/high school.
That's a major change, although we had organized activities, too, they just weren't as omnipresent as they've become the last couple or three decades.
Living by a beach also had its benefits once the kids were old enough to go by themselves, they all spent a lot of time in, next to and on the Bay.
Our kids had friends who had something scheduled every day, sometimes two things a day. Mine, however, did not. We believed they needed time to be kids and figure things out on their own.
Having just recently raised two, I'd say their generation was just as active as ours. The difference was a lot more of it was organized compared to our generation where it was spontaneous. Soccer (Fall, winter indoor, spring), Little League, softball, basketball, Scouts/CubScouts, and then school sports when they hit middle/high school.
Yes to this. My generation was blessed with childhoods that were a lot less structured (other than Scouts, Little League, piano lessons, and dancing school).
We had time to climb trees, watch ants, daydream, pretend we were pioneers, read, play hide and seek, play with neighbor kids after school minus arranged "play dates", catch and release lightning bugs and learn to entertain ourselves without much adult direction and minimal supervision.
We spent a lot more time outside back then - now, though I live in a neighborhood full of children, it's rare to see children playing outside (one or two families are exceptions). Neighbor children don't even seem to know one another very well, much less play together regularly and spontaneously.
I don't remember kids complaining of boredom very often back in the day.
Yes to this. My generation was blessed with childhoods that were a lot less structured (other than Scouts, piano lessons, and dancing school). We had time to climb trees, watch ants, daydream, pretend we were pioneers, read, play hide and seek, play with neighbor kids after school minus arranged "play dates", catch and release lightning bugs and learn to entertain ourselves without much adult direction and minimal supervision. I don't remember kids complaining of boredom very often back then.
I didn't dare complain about being bored back then (not that I ever was, being an imaginative child who was good at self-entertainment). Complain about being bored and a parent would *find* you something to do that taught you to never openly voice that opinion within earshot of any adult ever again, lol.
Kids still seem to be kids these days--especially the small town and country kids who tend to be raised a bit more free range than the exurban/suburban kids. My partner's kids pretty openly wander around their town with friends, ride bikes, skateboard, go on hikes up into the woods as they live in a good area for such things.
The main difference between Gen-X and Gen-Z is that my friends and I had such freedoms at a much younger age than they. For example, my siblings and I pretty much had the run of our little rural town from age 7/8 onward. So long as you showed up for meals and when the streetlight came on in the evenings, the adults in our world pretty much left us to our own devices once our assigned tasks had been completed. (For my friends and me, this was in the early 'eighties through the mid-'nineties.)
My niece and nephew and my best friend's children who are of similar ages to my partner's children have longer parental leashes than they, but they still do the same sorts of things in addition to a fair amount of gaming and screen time (sometimes the screen time meshes with their physical activities.) The kids also like to get together with their friends (especially the girls) and create dances that they film on TikTok. Save the filming part, I remember doing a lot of the very same things that the teen girls with whom I spend a fair amount of time now do with their friends and siblings. The more things change.....
My mother was born in 1937. She said as a young girl, she would lie in bed at night to hear the radio dramas. The Shadow and others. She said radio stretched the imagination. You could only imagine what that scary monster looked like in your head as you lie shaking in your dark bedroom hiding under the covers!! The same is true with good books. Reading fuels the imagination. No pictures: reading a Hardy Boys mystery, you might have a line something like "....as the boys were exploring the cold, dark cave, they suddenly heard a strange noise and shined the flashlight upward and........". And then? And then? You will have to slowly and carefully turn the page to find out!!
My mother was born in 1937. She said as a young girl, she would lie in bed at night to hear the radio dramas. The Shadow and others. She said radio stretched the imagination. You could only imagine what that scary monster looked like in your head as you lie shaking in your dark bedroom hiding under the covers!! The same is true with good books. Reading fuels the imagination. No pictures: reading a Hardy Boys mystery, you might have a line something like "....as the boys were exploring the cold, dark cave, they suddenly heard a strange noise and shined the flashlight upward and........". And then? And then? You will have to slowly and carefully turn the page to find out!!
And I bet in the 1940s there were parents who walked around, shaking their heads and saying "You know, we didn't have radio as kids so we actually did things instead of sitting around listening to sounds come out of a box!", because every generation thinks the next generation is doing it 'wrong'.
I lived on a small 5 acre farm in the early 60's. I remember roto-tilling for hours on end and planting vegetables. I had 3 older brothers, but they seemed to have other activities. One was sitting on me and tickling me until I threw up...that was fun. I also remember grandma chopping off chickens heads. At 80, she was great at it. We had a forested hill side right behind our house. I spent hours exploring the trails around there.
My dad worked at Boeing Aircraft as a Biologist. They used trout to test effluent water. My dad would bring the trout home after a friend and I dug two ponds. Feeding and caring for those fish turned into a 35 year career working at fish hatcheries.
I also remember laying in bed late at night listening to FM radio. I heard some fabulous music and decided to learn guitar which I still play to this day at 67.
My mother was born in 1937. She said as a young girl, she would lie in bed at night to hear the radio dramas. The Shadow and others. She said radio stretched the imagination. You could only imagine what that scary monster looked like in your head as you lie shaking in your dark bedroom hiding under the covers!! The same is true with good books. Reading fuels the imagination. No pictures: reading a Hardy Boys mystery, you might have a line something like "....as the boys were exploring the cold, dark cave, they suddenly heard a strange noise and shined the flashlight upward and........". And then? And then? You will have to slowly and carefully turn the page to find out!!
We were still doing that in the 2000s; only it was "Coast to Coast" a.m. radio in the middle of the night. Even as an adult that would scare me once in awhile, lol. Art Bell, y'know.
In restaurants, they'd give kids crayons and coloring pages to occupy them. Now, they all have a tablet to keep them quiet.
Our play was making up stuff: we were horses, we were cowboys, we were Indians, we were building tree forts or "clubs" out of cardboard on empty lots. Rode our bikes everywhere. Pulled little Red Wagons.
I had a garden and a horse so was never bored.
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